In Psalm 121:3, the author says, “God will not let my foot be moved ... my foot is on a foundation that can never be shaken. It’s not these hills or this terra firma beneath my feet; it’s God” (my paraphrase). What do you see as truly permanent in your life? What do you see as being able to be taken away?
My wife, Veronica, is God’s provision to meet so many of my needs. She’s my comfort, my companion, my support, my best friend. In her, I have experienced the goodness and provision of God. But I know that no earthly relationship is immovable. All earthly relationships can be shaken, including this one.
In July 1997, Veronica and I went out on our second date. (She didn’t know they were dates; she thought it was just two friends hanging out, but I knew they were pre-engagement meetings. I just had to play my cards slowly to not freak her out.) The morning after, I was in class, and a friend of mine who knew I’d gone out with her again asked me how it went. I gave him a thumbs up. And he asked, “You really like her, huh?” I really did. So I pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and wrote down some 60 or so adjectives that depicted all the ways I thought she was incredible and why I was going to marry her. I showed him, and he acted a little interested, but I’m sure inwardly he was rolling his eyes, regretting ever asking me. I shoved that paper back into my notebook and forgot about it.
Two and a half years later, when Veronica and I got engaged, I remembered that list. It was all crumpled up, but I bought this really expensive frame for it and gave it to Veronica on our wedding day. I said to her, “This list represents all the beautiful things you are to me that I noticed from the very beginning.” Pretty romantic, right? But on the bottom, I put a phrase from C.S. Lewis that is one of the most important in my life: “You represent something that can never be taken away from me.”
Lewis was saying that the greatest earthly gifts are like rays of sunshine that warm your face on a fall day. Lewis said that you feel the warmth of that ray and are thankful for it, but what you should really be thankful for is the sun from which those rays emanate. Because here’s the thing: At some point, you may be hidden from the ray. Something may block the ray from hitting your face—a storm cloud or something. Even in those situations, the sun behind that ray remains, and you’ll never be separated from that sun. Be thankful for the ray, but always put your hope in the sun.
As much as I love my wife and don’t want to imagine a day without her, I knew then—and I know now—that she could be taken away from me. Not even the best marriages are permanent—yes, of course, you make a vow to be together for life—but none of us is guaranteed a single day together. While I hope we die together in a skydiving accident when we’re 90, the chances are that one of us is going to leave the other alone, and in that time, when the ray is hidden from our face, the sun of God’s goodness remains. The steadfast love of the LORD endures forever.
My wife is just one display of God’s goodness in my life. There are others—my friends, my family, my health, my ministry—these are all rays of the sun, but I don’t hope in them. The LORD is my keeper. He’s the shade at my right hand. “When darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace; in every high and stormy gale; my anchor holds within the vale.”
At different points in your life, God uses different hills to protect and provide for you, but when one of those hills gives way, the God behind that hill is still there, because he is your keeper forever and ever.
Recently, I was sitting in a staff meeting when an email popped into my inbox from George, a guy I haven’t heard from in 31 years. I wasn’t even sure how he got my email address. In the fall of 1992, with only two weeks left to go in the fall semester, he suddenly moved into the suite across the hall from my dorm room at Campbell University. (If you haven’t heard of Campbell, that’s okay. It’s pretty elite, called by many the “Harvard of the Sandhills.”)
George was a fifth-year senior, about to graduate—at least, he hoped to—but he’d just been kicked out of his apartment for hosting too many drunken frat parties. By his own admission, he was a mess. I remember he had put up all these pictures of Bud Light and scantily-clad women. I shared the gospel with him, and unsurprisingly, he treated me like I was a little crazy. For the two weeks that he lived there, we “argued” about the gospel until late in the evening, multiple nights. But he confided to me that he was unhappy and that all sorts of odd things were happening in his life. For instance, he had been using a pay phone one afternoon (Note: For younger readers, a “pay phone” was essentially a plexiglass toilet stall with a phone in it, covered with the germs of millions of people), and, as he stood in that booth, he found a random piece of paper that said, “Jesus loves you. Come to him now.” He thought that was odd, but later that day, he met a random Christian on a bus who told him the exact same thing: “Jesus loves you, come to him now.” And he didn’t know this, he said, but God was softening his heart.
Well, the first weekend after he moved across the hall from me, he went to a concert down in Charlotte and got arrested for drunk driving. His mom posted bail for him, but his car got impounded, and he had no way back to campus, so he hitchhiked on I-85 back to Buies Creek. It was late, and nobody would pick him up, and he said something inside him just collapsed. He got down on his knees on the side of the road and said, “God, if you’re real, just give me something.” And that’s when he heard, he said, a voice inside him say, “Look up.” He looked up and there was a billboard right above him on I-85 that said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” And he recognized it as the same thing I’d been telling him in his dorm room.
Eventually, he made it back to campus, immediately found me, and I led him to Christ right there in his dorm room. A few days later, he graduated and moved to California. Honestly, I never expected to hear from him again. And I wasn’t sure what would happen to his relationship with God. He didn’t have any real support, and he had just moved across the country.
But then, a year later, out of the blue, he called me to tell me how he’d gotten to share the gospel at his grandfather’s funeral and told me how God was at work in his life. I remember standing there in my house, tears in my eyes, realizing that George’s story had never depended on me. When I was cut off from George’s life, the God who had started this good work in George remained.
That was the last time I talked to George … until his email appeared in my inbox, 31 years later:
“Hi J.D., It was 32 years ago today, at Campbell University, that you allowed the Lord to use you, and my eternity changed as a result. I wanted to tell you that this past year ... my 19-year-old daughter, Grace, went home to be with Jesus after a 15-month battle with brain cancer.
Through it all, she and I have been comforted by the cross. The love and commitment that Jesus demonstrated at Calvary were the anchor that kept us grounded and assured of his presence throughout. I just wanted to reach out and say thank you, brother. … Thank you for your availability to the Lord and the boldness you had when sharing the love of Christ with me 32 years ago. Because of it, my life has been changed, eternally ... So, thank you.
BTW, I hope you don’t mind, but I will probably send you more of these thank you emails around this time of year until I am called home to be with Jesus myself. God bless you, brother.”
Why do I share this story? Because it reminded me all over again that all I ever am is a tool in God’s hand, just a wrench in his toolbelt; God is ultimately the one who is our provider and protector and our keeper. Whatever earthly things have been those things for you—a parent, a friend, a spouse, a pastor, a job, a savings account—they are all temporary, impermanent, and insufficient, like the hills around Jerusalem. They won’t last forever, but the God behind them will.
He is your keeper from this time forth and forevermore.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at [email protected]."
